Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets

by David Simon

  His wife knew he was working the Latonya Wallace case, and somehow, in a year’s time, she had accustomed herself to a detective’s hours. In fact, the whole household seemed to revolve around the little girl. Once, as Pellegrini was walking out the door on a Saturday morning, heading downtown for the third consecutive weekend, his older boy ran up to him.

  “Play with me,” Michael said.

  “I have to go to work.”

  “You’re working on Latonya Wallace,” the three-year-old said.

  By the middle of March, Pellegrini saw his health begin to suffer. He coughed in fits: a deep, rasping hack, worse than his usual smoker’s wheeze, and it stayed with him through the day. At first he blamed the cigarettes; later, he complained about the aging ventilation system in the headquarters building. The other detectives were quick to join in: Never mind the cigarettes, they told him, the asbestos fibers set loose by cracking acoustic tile were enough to kill a man.

  “Don’t worry, Tom,” Garvey told him after one morning roll call. “I hear that cancer you get from breathing asbestos is slow and lingering. You’ll have plenty of time to work the case.”

  Pellegrini tried to laugh, but a thin wheeze gave way to the hacking. Two weeks later, he was still coughing. Worse, he was having trouble getting out of bed and more trouble staying awake at the office. No matter how much he slept, he managed to wake up exhausted. A short visit to the doctor yielded no obvious reasons, and the other detectives, armchair psychiatrists one and all, were quick to blame the Latonya Wallace file.

  Veterans on the shift told him to forget the goddamn thing, to get back in the rotation and pick up a fresh murder. But the cutting in the Southeast only pissed him off-all that argument and aggravation just to prove that some Perkins Homes dope dealer cut up a customer over $20. Likewise that dunker from the Civic Center, the one where the maintenance employee responded to complaints about his tardiness by killing his boss.

  “Yeah, I stabbed him,” the guy says, covered with the victim’s blood. “He hit me first.”

  Christ.

  A little girl has been raped and killed and the detective charged with solving the crime is in some other part of the city putting handcuffs on the most mindless shitbirds. No, Pellegrini tells himself, the cure is not the next case, or the next case after that.

  The cure is on his desk.

  As the dayshift ends and the rest of D’Addario’s detectives drift toward the elevators, Pellegrini stays put in the annex office, turning the stack of color photos in his hand and scanning the collection one more time.

  What has he missed? What has been lost? What is still waiting for him up on Newington Avenue?

  Holding one of the straight-on photographs of the body, Pellegrini stares at a thin metal rod resting on the sidewalk a few feet from the child’s head. It isn’t the first time he’s looked at that metal rod and it won’t be the last. To Pellegrini, that particular detail has come to symbolize everything that has gone wrong with the case.

  Pellegrini noticed the metal rod almost immediately after the photographs came upstairs from the crime lab, two days after the body was discovered. There was no doubt about it: the metal rod in the picture was the same one that Garvey had recovered during the trainees’ second-day search on Newington Avenue. When Garvey pulled the tubing out of that rear yard, it still carried a hair and a clot of coagulated blood-blood that had since been matched to the victim. Yet the day the body was found, the metal tubing had somehow been overlooked.

  Pellegrini remembers that morning at the scene and the vague premonition that warned him to slow everything down. He remembers that moment when the ME’s people came for the body and asked if everyone was ready. Yeah, they were ready. They had walked every inch of that yard and checked every detail twice. So what is that goddamn piece of metal doing in the photographs? And how the hell had they missed it in those early hours?

  Not that Pellegrini has any idea what the metal tubing has to do with his murder. Maybe it was dumped there with the body. Maybe it was used by the killer, perhaps to simulate sexual intercourse. That would explain the blood and hair, as well as the vaginal tearing discovered at autopsy. Or maybe the damn thing was lying in the yard earlier, jetsam from a broken television stand or curling iron that somehow got mixed up in his crime scene. Perhaps the blood and hair were swept into the tube when the old man came out to clean his yard after the body was removed. There was no way of knowing, but the fact that a piece of evidence had not been noticed for twenty-four hours was unnerving. What else had they missed?

  Pellegrini reads further into the case file, reviewing some of the reports from the canvass of the 700 block. Some of the interviews seemed to have been carefully performed, with detectives or detail men asking follow-up questions or encouraging witnesses to elaborate on answers. Others, however, seem perfunctory and halfhearted, as if the officer involved had already convinced himself that the interview was a wasted effort.

  Pellegrini reads the reports and thinks of questions that could have been asked, should have been asked, in those first days, when memories are fresh. A neighbor says she doesn’t know anything about the murder. Fine, but does she remember any noise in the alley that night? Voices? Cries? Automobile sounds? Car headlights? Nothing that night? What about in the past? Any problems with anyone in the neighborhood? You’ve got a couple of people living nearby that make you nervous, right? Why’s that? Did your children ever have any problems with these people? Who don’t you want them going near?

  Pellegrini includes himself in this critical assessment. There are things he wished he had done in those early days. For example, the pickup truck that the Fish Man used the week of the murder to carry junk from his burned-out store-why hadn’t they taken a better look at that vehicle? Too quickly they had bought into the argument that the little girl had been carried into the alley, presumably by someone traveling no more than a block. But what if the Fish Man had done the murder up on Whitelock Street? That was too far away to carry the body, but it was the same week that he had access to a neighbor’s truck. And what might a careful search of the truck have yielded? Hairs? Fibers? The same tarlike substance that stained the little girl’s pants?

  Landsman had left the investigation believing that the Fish Man was not the killer, that they would have broken the store owner in the long interrogation if he were indeed their man. Pellegrini still isn’t sure. For one thing, the Fish Man’s story has too many inconsistencies and not enough alibi-a combination sure to keep a man on any detective’s list. And then, five days ago, he had blown his polygraph.

  They performed the lie detector test at the State Police barracks in Pikesville-their first opportunity to schedule it since the investigation had centered on the store owner. Incredibly, the Baltimore department did not have a qualified polygraph examiner of its own; although it handled close to half the homicide investigations in Maryland, the BPD had to rely on the State Police to accommodate its cases on an ad hoc basis. Once the test had been scheduled, they needed to find the Fish Man and convince him to take the examination voluntarily. In a manner as convenient as it was coercive, this was accomplished by locking the old man up on an outstanding marital support warrant-now several years old-that Pellegrini had discovered in the computer. The warrant had never been served and the legal issue was very likely moot; nonetheless, the Fish Man was soon in police custody. And once a man lands at City Jail, even a lie detector test begins to seem like a reasonable diversion.

  At the State Police barracks, the Fish Man proceeded to blow the box, sending the polygraph needle soaring on every key question about the murder. The polygraph result was not, of course, admissible as evidence, nor did every homicide detective believe in lie detection as an exact science. Still, the result added to Pellegrini’s suspicions.

  So, too, did the arrival of an unexpected, if not entirely credible, witness. The man was a smokehound all right, as unbelievable a character as a detective might find. Arrested for assault in the
Western District six days ago, he tried to make friends by assuring the booking officer that he knew who killed Latonya Wallace.

  “And how do you know that?”

  “He told me he did it.”

  When Pellegrini got to the Western District that day, he heard a story about two old acquaintances drinking at a west side bar, about one acquaintance saying that he had recently been picked up and questioned for the murder of a little girl, about the other acquaintance asking whether he had committed the crime.

  “No,” the first man said.

  But later in the conversation the liquor got good to that man, who turned to his companion and said he would tell the truth. He did kill the child.

  In the course of several interviews, the new witness related the same story to the detectives. He had known the man with whom he had been drinking for years. The man ran a store up on Whitelock Street, a fish store.

  And so a second polygraph was scheduled for the day after tomorrow. Leaning back in his chair, Pellegrini reads the reports of the new witness’s interrogation with a mind balanced between serene hope and committed pessimism. In two days, he is sure, the man will also blow his box, failing the polygraph just as miserably as the Fish Man did. He will do this because his story is so perfect, so valuable, that it can’t possibly be true. A barroom confession, Pellegrini tells himself, is almost too easy for this case.

  Pellegrini knows, too, that soon he will have a separate suspect file on the new witness as well. Not only because the willingness to implicate someone in a child killing is unusual behavior, but also because the new man himself knows the Reservoir Hill area and has a police record. For rape. With a knife. Nothing, Pellegrini tells himself again, is ever easy.

  Closing the file with the office reports, Pellegrini reads through a draft report of his own, a four-page missive to the captain outlining the status of the case and arguing for a complete, prolonged review of the existing evidence. Without any primary crime scene or physical evidence, the report argued, there wasn’t much point in looking at any particular suspect and then attempting to connect him to the murder.

  “This tactic might be successful in certain circumstances,” Pellegrini had written, “but not in a case where physical evidence is lacking.”

  Instead, the memo urged a careful review of the entire file:

  Since the collection of that data was accomplished by no less than twenty detail officers and detectives, it is reasonable to believe that a significant piece of information may exist, but has not yet been developed. It is the intent of your investigator to limit the number of investigators to the primary and secondary detectives.

  In simple terms, Pellegrini wants more time to work the case and he wants to work it alone. His report to the captain is clear, yet bureaucratic; generally succinct, yet written in the departmental prose that makes anyone with a rank higher than lieutenant feel warm and fuzzy all over. Still, it could be better, and if he is going to get the time to review the case properly, the captain will have to be on board.

  Pellegrini pulls the staple from the top page and spreads the draft on his desk, prepared to spend another hour or so at the typewriter. But Rick Requer has other ideas. On his way out of the annex office, he catches Pellegrini’s attention and cups his hand to his mouth in a repetitive, arclike motion-the international hand signal for uninhibited alcohol consumption.

  “C’mon, bunk, let’s go have a couple.”

  “You leaving?” asks Pellegrini, looking up from the file.

  “Yeah, I’m out of here. Barrick’s squad is already in on four-to-twelve.”

  Pellegrini shakes his head, then waves at the sea of paper on his desk. “I got some stuff here I wanted to go through.”

  “You working over on that case?” asks Requer. “It’ll wait ’til tomorrow, won’t it?”

  Pellegrini shrugs.

  “C’mon, Tom, give it a night off.”

  “I don’t know. Where you going to be?”

  “At the Market. Eddie Brown and Dunnigan are already down there.”

  Pellegrini nods, mulling it over. “If I get a few things done,” he says finally, “I might see you down there.”

  No way, thinks Requer, walking toward the elevators. No way are we going to see Tom Pellegrini at the Market Bar when he could just as easily spend four hours beating himself up over Latonya Wallace. So when Pellegrini sidles up to the bar a half hour later, Requer is momentarily startled. Suddenly, without warning, Pellegrini has let go of the Case Without Pity and come up for a little air. By any reckoning, a drinking session at the Market Bar is a fine time and place for some back slapping and confidence building; Requer, already half-smoked on good Scotch, is just the man for the job.

  “My man Tom,” Requer says. “What are you drinking, bunk?”

  “A beer.”

  “Hey, Nick, gave this gentleman what he wants on me, man.”

  “What’re you drinking there?” asks Pellegrini.

  “Glenlivet. Good shit. You want one?”

  “No. Beer’s fine.”

  And so they settle down, one round after another, until other detectives arrive and the scene photos and witness statements and office reports seem a little less real, and Latonya Wallace becomes more cosmic joke than tragedy. Sisyphus and his rock. De Leon and his fountain. Pellegrini and his little dead girl.

  “I’ll tell you this,” says Requer, holding court and bringing the liquor to his lips. “When Tom first got up there, I thought he wasn’t any good at all. I mean that…”

  “And now that you seen me work,” says Pellegrini, half serious, “you know you were right.”

  “No, bunk,” says Requer, shaking his head, “I knew you were all right when you put down that case in the projects. What was that boy’s name?”

  “Which case?”

  “The one from high-rise. East side.”

  “George Green,” says Pellegrini.

  “Yeah, right, Green,” agrees Requer, waving the empty shot glass in a brief semaphore at Nicky the bartender. “Everyone told him that the case was a loser. I even told him that. I told him to…” Requer pauses as Nicky pours, downs half the shot and tries to continue. “What was I sayin’?”

  Pellegrini shrugs, smiling.

  “Oh yeah, this case was no fuckin’ good, no fuckin’ good at all. Drug murder up in the high-rises, right. Black kid over on Aisquith Street, so nobody’s gonna give a damn anyway. No witnesses, no nothing. I told him to forget the motherfucker and go on to something else. He doesn’t listen to me or anyone else. Stubborn motherfucker didn’t listen to Jay neither. He just goes out on his own and works the case for two days. Didn’t listen to none of us and guess what happened?”

  “I dunno,” says Pellegrini sheepishly. “What happened?”

  “You solved the motherfucker.”

  “I did?”

  “Stop fuckin’ with me,” says Requer, turning back to an audience of CID detectives. “He went out and solved the motherfucker on his own. That’s when I knew Tom was going to work out.”

  Pellegrini says nothing, embarrassed.

  Requer gives a quick glance over his shoulder and realizes that even with half a drink on, the younger detective isn’t buying any of it.

  “No, seriously, Tom, seriously.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. Listen to me.”

  Pellegrini sips his beer.

  “Fuck it, I’m not sayin’ this ’cause you’re here, bunk. I’m sayin’ it for the truth. When you came up, I thought you were gonna be bad, I mean no good at all. But you’ve done a helluva job. Really.”

  Pellegrini smiles and hails Nicky for one last one, pushing his empty across the bar and pointing to the shot glass in front of Requer. The other detectives turn to another conversation.

  “I wouldn’t say the same thing about Fred,” says Requer quietly enough so that the comment goes no farther than Pellegrini. “I wouldn’t.”

  Pellegrini nods, but he is suddenly unc
omfortable. He and Fred Ceruti had transferred into Landsman’s squad together, filling vacancies that occurred within weeks of each other. Like Requer, Ceruti is black, but unlike Requer-who had six years’ seasoning in narcotics before the transfer to homicide-Ceruti is fresh from the Eastern District with only four years on the force. He has been pushed up to the sixth floor of headquarters by the captain, who saw him do good plainclothes work at the district level. But to Requer, those credentials aren’t enough.

  “I mean I like Fred. I really do,” says Requer. “But he isn’t ready for homicide. We’ve walked him through cases and shown him what needs to be done but it doesn’t get through. He’s not ready yet.”

  Pellegrini says nothing, aware that Requer is the veteran investigator in his squad and one of the most tenured black detectives in the homicide unit; he made his way up to CID at a time when black officers were still hearing racial jokes in the district roll call rooms. Pellegrini knows for a guy like that to sit here and punch the Italian kid’s dance card while letting Ceruti pass is not an easy thing.

  “I’ll tell you this,” Requer tells the other CID men at the bar. “If someone in my family got killed, if I got killed, I’d want Tom to work it.” A detective’s compliment.

  “You really must be drunk,” says Pellegrini.

  “No, bunk.”

  “Well, Rick,” says Pellegrini, “thank you for that vote of confidence. I might not solve your murder, but I’d definitely make some overtime on it.”

  Requer laughs, then calls for Nicky. The bartender pours one last shot, on the house, and the detective sends the Scotch sailing down his throat in one fluid, practiced motion.